So as the title says I'm confused... This is the first car I have ever owned with a dizzy (I have older cars but they have all been diesel Volkswagens). I didn't have a lot of time to look at the ignition since I'm 3hr.s away from my SE at college and my biggest focus was on making it run.
It seems to be a fairly normal vacuum advance distributer, with the ignition split between two coils (and two advances) for leading and trailing. That much I understand. It's all this talk of J-109's and igniters that gets me. I know that igniters on dis cars use position sensor input to fire the coils, do these work the same? Where are they mounted and what do they use for position (dizzy location?) What the heck is a J-109?

 

You are speaking of the igniters. There is two of them small pack on the back of a square box on the strut tower. They are common to fail at around 110$ a piece a lot of people upgrade them to the GM module for about 25$ and some wiring.

 

so the J-109 is an igniter? right, so is there a ignition module to or is the advance fully vacuum?

 

J-109 is the type of the ignitor! the type in your car is J-109 as many of the 1st gens if i remember correctly there is a lower number J-series ignitor from earlyer 7's. the ignitors are in the dizzy if your are looking at the dizzy from the driver sid eof the car they will be at your 6 and 12 o'clock postion of looking at the dizzy! you will see 2 plugs one on each ignitor!

 

on the strut tower? i thought the igniters were mounted on the distributor body???

 

thats what im saying i think i got a pic somewhere

 

its part of the whole unit. I ment to say ignition module.

 

1980 has a remote igniters that are located in a block box in the driver side strut tower.

 

gotcha ... never had the pleasure of owning or working an SA. you live and learn, i guess.

 

so my SE has them in the distributer right?

 

ON the distributor, and yes.

 

did not know that either ! thank you!

 

If your J109 igniters go out, as stated above, you can change to HEI (GM) igniters. I replaced my leading right after I got my car a few months ago,
and recently changed to DLIDFIS with two HEI's. Check the FAQ's for Jeff20B's write up on this, or search and you'll find other posts/pictures.

- David